SEO #5a: Quality Content

In short: quality matters and clarity is the key to quality. Basically clarity works.

When we think of quality content we tend to think of aspects such as:

• writing style
• interesting
• informative
• engaging
• unique
• spelling, grammar, punctuation
• you know..... the traditional measures of quality.

To get a deeper look at the quality of your page content, consider the following: when a visitor looks at your page are the following key points clear:

• What is the purpose of your website?
• What is the purpose of the current page?
• What is special about your site and this page in particular?
• What other products, features, or services do you offer?
• How can I find these other products, features, or services?
• Is it clear what happens when the user clicks on something?
• Who is behind the website? In other words, who are you?
• What information (if any) do you collect?
• What do you do (if anything) with that information?

The last two points are handled by inclusion of a valid link to a privacy statement. It is not required to explain on each and every page your privacy policy -- at least not in words.

Before we discuss the next thing I'd like to bring to your attention, let's have you do a little experiment. This experiment will require access to about 15 people -- three groups of five.

For this experiment you will divide the 15 people into three groups of five.

Have the first group of five people look at three pages on your website. Give them 60 seconds to study each page. Immediately after the 60 seconds have elapsed have them answer the following questions.

• What is the website about?
• What does this web page offer?
• What products, features, or services are offered on the page?

After someone has studied 3 pages in this fashion ask them the following:

• Would you trust this company enough to make a purchase -- assuming you wanted the product?
• Would you be interested in finding out more about this company?
• Would you recommend to any friends that they take a peek at this website?

Have the second group of five do the same thing -- but this time give them only 15 seconds to study a page.

Have the third group of five repeat the above, with only 5 seconds.

These will be the 60 second, 15 second, and 5 second groups.

The 5 second group is gathering their impression about the website based almost entirely on the look and feel of the site. They don't have enough time to read fine print. Detail will elude them. So whatever impression they come away with will be based on that all important "first impression."

More about this later.

Webdesign Advice From Paypal -- 5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales

Why is Paypal giving web page design & SEO advice?

That's right. Paypal has made it their business to provide web page design & SEO advice.
Use this link to check out their article.

So, why do you think Paypal would involve themselves? What is their gain? Simple. Paypal makes money processing orders -- a few percentage points on every sale a merchant processes through the Paypal system. So, it is simple math.

The more sales a web page generates the more money Paypal makes. So, the quality and functionality of a web page is of intimate concern to Paypal.

Admittedly, the appearance of being helpful can be of benefit to Paypal. I'm sure the marketing boys and girls are happy to use this to enhance the company image. However, the fact of being helpful is of even greater value to the bottom line. So I trust that they did not dredge up miscellaneous waffle to parade in front of webmasters. I believe Paypal either paid for the best advice they could find, or turned an in-house team loose on the challenge of finding their five design element suggestions.

Below you'll find Paypal's five points with a few comments from myself.

5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales

1. Do make calls-to-action obvious

Make your shopping cart link easy to find on a page. Use contrasting and/or bold colors to call attention to CTAs, which allows them to stand apart from other elements and get noticed.

As with all good suggestions, this seems obvious when it is brought to our attention. Of course you want to have your call to action visually distinct from the general hubbub of your page. You want your call to action to stand out and either scream "here I am" or at least respectfully declare in a louder voice "give me a look."

Notice the suggestion to use contrasting and/or bold colors and the absence of a suggestion to use a different font face. Too many web designers use too many fonts in an effort to establish variety on the page. This is not a good idea. Is much better to use color, font-weight, and font-size.

2. Do use an action color for buttons.

People respond differently to different colors. Cool colors like blue and green have a calming effect. Warm colors like red and orange inspire passion and impulsive actions. Using red (or other warm colors) for your "add to cart" buttons will help increase clicks on those buttons.

The existence of action colors is something that you may or may not already be familiar with. Yes, there are colors that tend to elicit (draw forth) certain reactions. These action colors are partially determined by heritage, and they are partially determined by environment. That means that the effect these colors have can be attributed to a combination of how we are built and how we are trained. Thus it is possible that in some future warm colors could be replaced as the key action colors. Who knows with the massive fascination with Green This and Green That, it could become an action color.

At the moment, my money is still on warm colors as the action color of choice. And the fact that Paypal (or whatever high priced consultant they hired) agrees supports my own observations.

3. Do use the principle of proximity to group related items.

For clarity, place descriptions and buttons near the products they're associated with. Make sure each product, description, and button group is separated from other groups in some way to avoid confusion.

Read point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4. Do this until it really sinks in. These two points are totally linked. You want a product image, description and call to action ("buy now" button) for each product. AND, you want them visually distinct on your page so that any half-witted, over-stressed, in a hurry, no time to study, gotta get in and get out quick, browser can instantly discern which piece of real estate on your page contains the image, description and buy me button for the product they are interested in.

4. Do control the flow in your design.

Show your product image, then your product description, and then your "buy now" button. Organize design elements to follow the buying process that goes through the customer's mind.

Actually, to be honest, I'm not a 100% sold on the necessity for the ordering. I accept 100% the need to have all three of these elements grouped into a single piece of web page real estate. But, I believe given proper grouping it is possible to put the "buy now" button near the product name/title.

Oh, perhaps this would be a good place to mention my own modification of the above law of three (image, description, cta). For clarity's sake I divide this into image, product name (or title), description, call to action.

A small modification I grant you. But an important one. Each product really does deserve its own name or title. And, as a design element it should be considered separately from the description. It will typically have a different font-size, color, or font-weight. Also, in my opinion, you will want to use h2 or h3 for the product name.

5. Do use whitespace.

Allow your design to breathe. Whitespace helps elements on a page get noticed, communicated the desire action to users. Whitespace also improves usability, is aesthetically pleasing, and increases comprehension.

Why would Paypal mention the use of whitespace? Well, it is nice to have 5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales rather than 4 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales. Five is a better number than 4. But, setting aside that trifle of  marketing cynicism, I think there is something much more significant being said by the above point #5. There are far too many pages that fail when it comes to proper use of whitespace.

A suggestion to use whitespace is necessary because people are not using it -- or at least not using it well enough. I'm sure we are all guilty to one degree or another.

There are far too many pages with failed usability because of insufficient whitespace. There are far too many pages that look like dog do because of improper use of whitespace.

And as for comprehension, when is the last time you asked yourself, "Hmmm, I wonder how comprehensible my page is?" I think more than adjustment of whitespace might be required here. However, proper use of whitespace is a good place to start.

In Closing

I'm not suggesting that Paypal actually cares about you and your website. They may, or they may not. However, they definitely care about their bottom line. And, since they make money from your sales you can bet they are motivated to do whatever is possible to enhance your sales and their bottom line.

SEO Must #4: Fix 404s, Spell Check, and Validate

There are many other, perhaps more important, aspects of SEO. However, there is no time better than the present to make sure your website is free from missing pages and that it has clean html and css.

Never forget, google's fundamental aim is to provide search results pointing to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.

So let's look at a few things that will help with the "quality" part.

Fix Missing Pages & Broken Links

404s (missing pages) are a bad thing. They are disappointing, and generally are to be avoided. One way that google has of helping people avoid 404s is to lower the page ranking of web pages found on sites with an abundance of 404s. Why should google put your site on the first page of search results when there is a good chance that the page is missing?

Spell Check Your Pages

Why should google be sticking their nose into the business of spelling and other such content issues? Hey, remember that part about providing search results leading to quality content. Well, google is trying many things in order to identify quality content. I don't believe they have spelling as part of their algorithm at the moment. But, what if one of the misspelled words is a keyword? No good for you. Also the kind of attention/effort that goes into spell check and cleaning the written content is helpful for noticing other aspects of the page that would benefit from correction.

Sometimes the best approach is from the side. Reading your content for spelling and grammar errors also gives you an opportunity to notice old prices, bland or uninspiring ad copy -- any number of items that would benefit from correction.

Also, people are more likely to create links to your pages if they are not put off by obvious typos and sloppy content. And remember, links to your site count a great deal toward the page ranking.

Validation

I use the W3.org HTML Validator and the W3.org CSS Validator. There are others. Some may be far superior. I just have developed a habit of using these.

Why validate? Because, broken html and broken css will result in broken pages. There is a thing called cross-browser compatibility. Just because Firefox or Chrome somehow manages to render the tangled mess of html and css that you call a page, does not mean that IE, or Safari, or Opera, or any number of other browsers will. You want your page rendered reasonably well on many different platforms.

Also, the attention needed to fix html and fix css puts you in the right frame of mind for general refinement of your website.

Does food coming from a clean kitchen taste better? Maybe yes, maybe no. But which would you prefer to eat?

SEO Must #3: Get The Description Right

The page description is part of the meta tags found in the <head> of an html page.

<meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="Description goes here">

Now that you have a good list of keywords -- or at least an excellent beginning list -- it is time to work on your page descriptions. There is much that is said about how to write these descriptions. Below is my short list of key principles for generating a description.

1. Make sure the description describes the page content.
2. Use your keywords.
3. Keep the description around 160 characters.
4. Each page should have a unique description.
5. Remember your description is actually an ad.

1. Make sure the description describes the page content.

First and foremost the description needs to describe the page. If this seems pretty obvious, then you are on the right track. Unfortunately, many folks believe the prime purpose of the description is to do something tricky about search engine optimization.

Yes it is true that we want to do SEO. But, that comes second. The first order of business is to make sure the description functions to describe the page.

2. Use your keywords.

Make sure that your description is keyword rich. It is best if the first few words of the description are keywords. Basically make sure that you avail yourself of every opportunity to use keywords that you can -- provided that you don't detract from the functionality of the description as a description.

3. Keep the description around 160 characters.

Apparently it is allowed to have descriptions of pretty much any length. However, if you look at Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you will notice that they cut off the description at 160 characters. So that would seem to be to be a nice target length for a description.

Do a few google searches. Look at the results page. Visually appraise the different entries on the page. Count the length of descriptions that you like the length of. Shoot for that length in your description.

4. Each page should have a unique description.

This goes back to googles primary goal of providing search results that point to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.

When viewing the search results the primary three pieces of information provided to the searcher are your page url, the page title, and the page description. Searchers will use your page descriptions in order to determine which of your pages are most on target with their search query.

So make the descriptions unique. The pages are unique aren't they? LoL gotcha. In case, you didn't know it, you will be penalized for duplicating content on your pages. How much of a penalty is open for discussion. But google has definitely gone on record saying they don't like. This will usually translate into reduction in page ranking.

5. Remember your description is actually an ad.

As mentioned above, your description will appear in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Thus, there will come a moment when the description for your page will appear alongside the descriptions of several other pages. In this moment you are competing for the attention of the searcher. So be seductive. Put some punch and wow in the description.

Conclusions

If you have genuine content, the above rules should help you to generate descriptions that serve your pages well.

SEO Must #2e: Expand Your Keyword List

At this point you should have created your keywords list, organized the list, and expanded it. Now it is time to start using this list. In this blog article we shall go over a few things to do, and a few things to not do.

When it comes to using your keywords on web pages, that's a most excellent idea. Just be sure to use them correctly, use them enough, and don't use them too much. Keyword stuffing is a bad thing. Stuff yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving if you insist. But, do not, stuff your pages with keywords -- not even one day a year.

Page Name

In this case, page name means the actual file name or URL that is used to access your page. If possible and reasonable, use keywords in the name. Use the dash (-) separator between the words so that search engines will recognize the separate words -- rather than one humongous oddity. For example golf-art has no ambiguity. But if you remove the dash this word can be read in a few different ways -- whatever gol means :)

Page Title

Use keywords in your title. In fact, the few two or three words in the title should be keywords. The page title I am referring to here is the one found in the <head> of your page.

Page Description

The page description is another prime spot for keywords. First and foremost make sure that your page description actually describes the page -- just make sure to use keywords while doing that. The description is the meta tag found in the <head> of your page.

<h1>Header 1</h1>

Incorporate keywords into the H1 header of your web page.

First Paragraph of Page

The first paragraph visible to search engines should be rich with keywords. The first paragraph that browsers see may not be the same first paragraph that the search engines see. This could easily happen if you have a div that floats to the right of your page. In which case, the first paragraph may end up on the right side of the screen.

First Visible Paragraph of Page

If the first visible paragraph happens to not be the same as the first paragraph that search engines find, then make sure that the first visible paragraph (when viewed by browsers) is rich with keywords as well.

<h2>Header 2</h2>

Incorporate keywords into a few H2 headers on your web page. The H2 headers will typically define separate sub-sections of a page. This gives you an ideal opportunity to incorporate different keywords.

Internal Text Links

When linking from one page of your website to another page of your website use keywords as the anchor text.

External Text Links

When linking to your website from your blog, forum postings, friend's websites, or anywhere other than your own internal website, also use keywords.

Image ALT

When adding images to a web page you should be properly using the image alt. Proper use of the image alt is a little more complex than we can describe in one paragraph here. The point for the moment, is that when entering text for the alt property of images keep your keywords in mind and use them as you are able.

Website Tagline

Your website should have a tagline. That tagline should be keyword rich.

What about keywords meta tag?

You will notice that nothing has been said as yet about the <head> keywords meta tag. That is because search engines still tend to ignore it. They will not penalize you for using it -- if you use it properly. They just tend to ignore it. How does one use the keywords meta-tag properly? Don't include a work in the keyword meta tag for a page unless that word appears on the page. If the word does not appear on the page you could potentially be penalized.

Constructing Pages

You have just spent a good deal of time brainstorming, organizing, expanding, and cleaning your keywords list. Thus, let's take it for given that the keywords on that list are important to you.  If this is the case, then you should have at least one page on your website with a name created from each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If for some reason you are making a one page website, then this would not be the case. However, unless for some reason you are intentionally restraining your website to a single page, then the more the merrier.

As you may know google plays their cards close to the chest -- meaning they do not publish their search engine algorithms. Whatever you have heard about or will hear about search engine algorithms comes from observation, experimentation, conjecture, and perhaps the fantasy of various writers. Some of these writers have suggested that when it comes to pages more is better. The presumption is that the more pages you have on a website the more effort has gone into the website reflecting more intention and perhaps better content. Keep in mind that google is honestly trying to help people find pages with good quality content. Thus all of their algorithms are designed to detect and give higher ranking to pages with good quality content. So for the moment, more pages are a good thing.

So if you are going to be making more pages, make sure to make at least one page for each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If  you find it difficult or impossible to make a page for some of your keywords then perhaps they did not belong on your list in the first place.

Organization of Your Website

As you may recall, during the generation of the keyword list there was an organize process. The organization of keywords that was established during the process is very likely an excellent hint on how your website should be organized.

Social Media

Some social media sites will only allow you to create pages related to your name or the name of your company. However, there are many social media sites that will allow for the creation of auxiliary pages. You should definitely see about nabbing pages created from your keywords. http://www.facebook.com/your-keywords-here would be sweet.

Google Adwords, etc.

When you embark on using google adwords to market your website you will be using your keywords. This might be pretty obvious since you used google adwords in the generation process. However, the "etc" part includes any promotions and marketing for your website. Brochures need to incorporate keywords from your list. Classified ads in the newspaper should draw from your keywords list. Everything you do in relation to marketing your website should be influenced by the keywords list.

If after reading the above suggested ways of utilizing your keywords list you get the feeling that perhaps you should have put more attention in the process, perhaps now is a good time to go back and redo that work.

SEO Must #2d: Expand Your Keyword List

Now that you have created a keywords list and organized the list, it's time to expand the list.

Why expand keywords list?

The objective of expanding of the list is not to make it bigger. The objective is to find keywords and combinations of keywords that you may not have as yet stumbled across.

Tools to expand the keywords list?

The following list will give you some ideas of where to go to expand the keywords list.

• Your Products
• Thesaurus
• Google Search Suggestions
• Google Adwords Tools
• Friends, Family, and Co-Workers

Your Products

If you have not already done so, expand your keyword list by including product names, name of their manufacturers, and perhaps even product numbers. I like to keep these types of keywords in a separate list -- off to the side. I use them in a slightly different fashion during development of the website content and creation of ads. So for the moment, collect them if you have them. But, keep them in a separate list.

Thesaurus

Input keywords, one at a time, into a thesaurus program. For each keyword you will be presented with one or more lists of alternative words. This can be a gold mine of previously overlooked terms.

Google Search Suggestions

Have you noticed that google (depending upon your browser settings) will offer a drop down box with suggestions for a search based on a partially typed work in the input box. If you start typing a keyword into the input box you may find one or more interesting search suggestions offered. Play around with this for a little -- just to see if you get lucky. Don't belabor it.

Google Adwords Tools

Here you will find a wealth of amazing tools for working with keywords.

1. Get a google account (if you don't have on)
2. Sign in with your google account, then select "Adwords" from your "My Account" screen.
3. Sign up for Adwords if required.
4. Access the Adwords Tools

The UI (user interface) is a little weird. I think they might be testing different interfaces because one day it will look one way. Another day it will look another way. Here is a link for Google Adwords Tools in case you can't find it. Usually I will find it after a little poking around. It's annoying to me that the tools do not have an entry in the top menu. Perhaps by the time you read this there will be such an entry.
When you find the tools play with them. There are several tools of great utility and value. They are more than a little tricky to understand. Adwords is a deep subject from which you will benefit by studying. But, that study is beyond the scope of this blog article. Google does have quite a bit of help on each topic. Hopefully you can blunder your way through. I would recommend the Keyword Tool (top of the list) as your first stop.

Friends, Family, and Co-Workers

Once again, don't overlook those close to you. Being a stranger does not grant automatic knowledge. And being a family member or friend does not automatically disqualify someone as having potentially valuable input. Admittedly since you've been subject to observing the eating and mating habits of those close to you it is harder to imagine them as knowledgeable.

However, keep in mind you are looking for keywords that the common folk would use to search for your services and products. I think it is eminently possible for family members and friends to be of the common variety.

SEO Must #2c: Organizing Your Keywords

Delete Failed Keywords

Now is the time to look back over your list and remove any keywords that in hindsight you don't believe belong on the list. Be brave, but don't be brutal. Just remove those keywords you honestly believe don't belong. The judgment here should not be based on strength of the keyword. It is appropriateness you are looking for. The reason for not removing keywords based on strength is because in the next blog we will use these keywords to expand our list and find stronger alternatives.

Create Groups

See if the keywords fall into natural groups. If there is more than one group, definitely divide your keywords
list into groups and put the keywords into whichever of the groups they belong. It may happen that some
keywords belong in more than one group -- well, put them into each group it belongs.

Prioritize

Now look at each group and prioritize the list for each group. Put the keywords in order of importance -- most important at the top, least important at the bottom. The importance is measured by your standard. The keywords that you believe to be the more important go at the top of the list.